Intel is laying off a major portion of its wearables group

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/18/intel-layoffs/

by sharmi • 10 years ago

110 52 10 years ago

mikestew2• 10 years ago

Intel took it a step further and shut down the Peak’s software support (including cloud storage), effective by year’s end.

And thus the reason I stick to companies like Garmin for my "wearables". If Garmin up and pulls out of the wearables market, then the market is well and truly screwed and my choice won't make any difference. But a company like Intel or Microsoft can just up and go "well, that hobby project didn't work out. Back to our core business. Oh, and pull the servers down." and you the consumer are left holding the bag.

ghaff• 10 years ago

Intel in particular has a pretty long record of making itself more directly relevant to consumers and just as long a history of mostly not having much success in that regard. (See ViiV/Digital Home for example.)

In general, though, wearables probably have to be considered a relatively underwhelming market so far. Yes, there are various fitness bands and smart watches that are mostly sold for fitness-related reasons and... Well, pretty much just fitness bands.

It's probably related to a lack of compelling capabilities in unobtrusive products that "just work" and don't require a lot of ongoing care and feeding.

throwanem7• 10 years ago

you the consumer are left holding the bag

Not in this case. They're issuing MSRP refunds, no questions asked, in exchange for returns whose shipping they also cover.

Full disclosure: I've just shipped back my own Basis Carbon Steel - a device not even implicated in the overheating issue, but one for which they're still accepting returns and providing refunds. I paid ~$150 for it a few years back; they've said they'll be sending me a $234 check. Obviously, since I haven't yet received the check, I don't yet know with certainty that they'll live up to that claim, but they've given me no reason to doubt that they will. Overall I'm very favorably impressed with the way they're handling the issue.

ikeboy3• 10 years ago

They will. I made nearly $10k buying up used (and new) ones on eBay and other places and sending them back. I've gotten paid for everything so far.

I also learned about the recall around June, around two months before it started hitting the media, which gave me an advantage. Although my most recent purchase was within the last month, there's still a small opportunity.

Also someone else seems to have cornered the eBay market, items that go on sale now tend to be bought relatively quickly (looking at sold items) before I see them. I probably could have done better by setting up instant alerts and sniping auctions, but I'm pretty happy with what I did get for the level of effort.

mikestew2• 10 years ago

Not in this case. They're issuing MSRP refunds, no questions asked, in exchange for returns whose shipping they also cover.

Kudos to Intel, and I've obviously incorrectly prejudged them.

That said, I still would like to avoid migration to a new platform, even with a full refund. It's why some of us stick with Apple. :-)

nnutter• 10 years ago

I can confirm I got a full MSRP refund for my Basis Peak.

gnicholas• 10 years ago

It's true that you'll get your money back, but it's still a pain for the consumer since this isn't an optional recall. They're shutting down the servers that enable the client-side apps, so the Peaks won't sync anymore. This means consumers have to deal with the hassle of returning the unit and move to another platform, after taking the time to move to this one.

arcanus• 10 years ago

With moore's law slowing/dying out, hard to blame intel for desperately trying to find new revenue streams.

agumonkey• 10 years ago

Latest CPU leaks mention 10nm cpus about to land. They managed to keep Moore's law afloat surprisingly longer than expected.

theparanoid• 10 years ago

I'm happy to be a /former/ Intel employee. Staying for layoffs sucks.

jakub_g• 10 years ago

Staying for layoffs sucks.

Depends on the country. I've heard about people who made little fortunes being laid off. The most lucky one got laid off twice after long tenures at two different companies (due to the companies closing sites in the country or something like that).

kilroy123• 10 years ago

True. It's not uncommon to get laid off, receive a few months pay. Find and start a new job weeks or a month later.

Though not everyone is so fourtanate.

throwanem7• 10 years ago

I see the article mentions the Basis recall, but I want to expand on that here for those who might look first or only at the comments.

For those who don't already know: Because the Basis Peak developed a nasty habit of overheating to the point of second-degree burns, Intel has recalled all Basis devices - not just the Peak, but prior versions as well.

If you currently own a Basis device or devices, visit https://www.mybasis.com/safety/ in order to find out how to send your recalled device or devices back to Intel, in exchange for a full MSRP refund. (This is no small consideration! In my case, I bought a Basis Carbon Steel several years ago for about $150. In exchange for shipping it back to Intel, to whom it is currently en route, I'm told I will receive a check for $234.)

Be advised also that the Basis data services will be shut down at the end of this year. If you have fitness data in those services which you want to retrieve, you must do so before January 1, 2017, or it will no longer be recoverable. Also, and for the same reason, no Basis devices will be able to sync from that date, which will make them essentially unusable even if they would otherwise be.

It's sort of a shame to see a good product go down in flames like this. On the other hand, the way Intel's handling it is extremely impressive, and I'm very glad to see it - we can but hope, however forlornly, that this is the first example of a new and much more customer-friendly style of handling IoT deprecations.

tootie• 10 years ago

Tech companies should just not try to make consumer products. Build your chips and your displays and your compilers and OSes, but please let retail businesses figure out what customers might want before you start building stuff just because you can. Apple is just about the only company that has managed to get away with doing both.

GuiA• 10 years ago

Asus, Acer, Samsung, Toshiba, MSI, IBM, Sony... all these companies and many others sell components to other companies, but also made consumer products that many people love. I don't quite get your logic.

makomk• 10 years ago

Intel's wearables push always seemed more like a PR stunt than an actual, thought-through business tactic. They put a great deal of effort into stuff like Arduino support and sponsoring BMX championships, a TV show (America's Greatest Makers), conceptual clothing lines, etc but apparently people who actually wanted to use their hardware in products had trouble getting support or chips and the specs just didn't seem to stand up (when they were available at all).

mattthebaker5• 10 years ago

It was, and to appease investors that they are doing something about new markets after missing mobile. No one in their right mind would choose Intel as the platform for a wearable. The microcontroller companies: ST, NXP, Freescale, etc have been deeply embedded there for decades.

ChuckMcM5• 10 years ago

This is too bad, and a bit understandable. Intel is in a really odd place at the moment. It is the 800lb gorilla in the CPU space who knows that the manufacturer of gorilla food is currently unable to produce enough food to feed it (the PC market). More systems running windowed operating systems that people use will on a day to day basis will ship with ARM chips this year. That is a huge shift. And while Intel is still king of the server shipments there are people who want to be there too (Power and ARM). Two things contributed to that, the first was that the smartphone became the "PC" for the masses, the second was that Linux is instruction set agnostic in the data center.

Intel really really needs a market they can dominate that consumes lots and lots of chips. IoT is one bet, Wearables (apparently was) one bet. The scary thing for Intel is that if they don't have enough demand to keep their billion dollar fabs pumping, they start burning cash. Not clear what the strategy there is. Look at IBM which sold off their chip capability to Global Foundry. Once you have over capacity, a chip fab rapidly becomes a huge liability.

That said, the world could probably use a state of the art open access chip house that wasn't in Asia or controlled by the Chinese. Not sure that Intel could go there given their company history and organization.

Digression: One of the uniquely nice things about Sun was that since their fiscal calendar ended on June 30th, when they axed major projects the layoffs came in the spring rather than right before New Years. It always sucks to be laid off but there are worse and better times to do so.

rsp19842• 10 years ago

Intel really really needs a market they can dominate that consumes lots and lots of chips. IoT is one bet, Wearables (apparently was) one bet.

Yes. And Computer Vision applications will likely be that market. There were big algorithmic break-throughs in the last decade and things are now mature and robust enough to be finally useful. Plus some immediate obvious customers are starting to show up: autonomous cars, AR/VR, drones.

Intel has acquired companies in the space for quite a while now (announced and un-announced deals) and will likely continue to do so. Trying to be an important player in this space is the right strategy IMO.

mattthebaker5• 10 years ago

If that market does play out and grow as much as predicted, Nvidia will be the company most likely to give Intel a run for their money.

mattthebaker5• 10 years ago

Intel has never been a company focused on chip volume, they chose to exit the DRAM business 20+ years ago. They focus on high end high margin products, which is now primarily servers with the contraction of the PC market. This is how they justify greater than $10B yearly expenditures on fabs and R+D. They have maintained, and still do maintain a 2 generation lead on process technology.

Alternate architectures are not going to do much to dent the two generation lead in process.

IoT and Wearables mean nothing to Intel, there is not enough money there. Mostly a marketing effort to signal to their investors they aren't going to miss the next big opportunity like they did mobile. Of course that ignores the fact that Intel was never going to be much of a player in mobile. All the money in mobile is in the base stations, not in the handsets, and Qualcomm (3rd largest semi conductor company behind Intel and Samsung) completely dominates the IP in that market. What matters there is radio technology, not microprocessors.

roymurdock• 10 years ago

IoT and Wearables mean nothing to Intel, there is not enough money there

Wearables maybe, as the market is relatively small as form factor-defined markets go, but I wouldn't be so quick to write off IoT, which describes a business model change more than a certain form factor or set of devices.

I listened to Murthy Renduchintala, President of the Intel IoTG group, speak at GE Minds+Machines earlier this week. He stressed FPGAs (acquisition of Altera) as well as SDN/NFV as key areas of interest for Intel going forward.

ksec• 10 years ago

And because of that, TSMC grows into the largest Pure Play company with market cap surpass Intel, and TSMC still has room to grow. PC market is shrinking, their Server market is healthy for now but if Zen is anything as decent as rumoured it will give Intel some competition. I dont believe ARM or PowerPC will give much trouble for Intel, at least not in the short run of 3 - 4 years time. Pretty much like Intel dont have much IP in mobile, no one will have the similar Server / Enterprise Grade IP in Storage, PCI-E, Memory, Networking and FPGA as Intel. All these matters a lot more then x86 these days.

I am not sure where the 2 Generation lead came from. It is more of a Generation lead. And it is shrinking, mainly due to Intel slowing down and other picking up pace a little. The 10nm from Samsung and TSMC next year wont be anything as good as Intel's 14nm. But their 7nm in 2018 will be better then Intel 14nm+. Of coz Intel will have 10nm by then, but it will be much smaller volume.

nl• 10 years ago

All the money in mobile is in the base stations, not in the handsets, and Qualcomm (3rd largest semi conductor company behind Intel and Samsung) completely dominates the IP in that market.

Citation needed.

From the second half of your comment, I think it's possible you are confusing the base band processor[1] with base stations. Qualcomm does have a lot of IP in baseband processors, and has made a lot of money from them. However, baseband processors are on the handset not the base station.

It's also incorrect to think that mobile CPUs aren't a large market. They aren't Intel size, but they are quite substantial. The majority of Qualcomm's revenue is from CPU sales[2] (although SoCs like the Snapdragon include the baseband processor on the same chip)

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseband_processor

[2] http://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/031116/qualcomm...

brutus1213• 10 years ago

Intel's IoT effort seems very strange to me. You can get Rpi or similar board for $5-25, while and Edison or Currie is a lot more expensive. I know dev boards is not where they want to make their money .. but surely the chips cannot price compare with the ARM SoCs on the cheaper boards. Fine .. you can run Windows on your embedded device with these things (Windows IoT Core ... but that also works on cheaper boards like RPi). Do they have a path to success in IoT or is it just like step 2 for the underpants gnomes?

Btw .. I feel the same way wrt Cisco and IoT. Perhaps the only large company that gets IoT IMHO is Amazon.

Intel's acquisition of Altera seems promising but I don't know how big a market that is. High-end applications are certainly price-insensitive but there is a lot that can be done with older gen hardware and the Chinese are creeping up on that already.

baybal2• 10 years ago

Well, Intel has a "product management disease" - when orders for new development come from Ivy league schooled management doctrinaires, and not obvious demands of the market. All American semi companies I know suffer this, and that's why Chinese eat their lunch.

witty_username3• 10 years ago

That said, the world could probably use a state of the art open access chip house that wasn't in Asia or controlled by the Chinese. Not sure that Intel could go there given their company history and organization.

Why should a chip house not be in Asia?

What are the issues with control by the Chinese [I assume you mean the Chinese government]?

ChuckMcM5• 10 years ago

The primary issues are trade tariffs, loss of intellectual property, and national security.

Trade tariffs for providing economic sanctions against countries you don't like, you could add $0.10 to every chip sold into the US as a tariff and pretty much instantly put the US into a recession.

IP theft is always an issue, and it depends on a local jurisdiction government for enforcement, so if the local government is lax in their enforcement you will experience more IP theft. Hence the whole Gonkai aspect of things.

National security because, as we've seen in research, inserting a capacitor in the chip that is not part of the circuit can create an undetectable back door in silicon[1] and that can compromise chips in sensitive systems. Again local governmental oversight is the lever to avoid such things but if you were in a state of cold war with the government in question?

[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/06/demonically-clever-backdoor-hi...

chenster• 10 years ago

I paid the original Basis B1 for $199. Is the original Basis B1 covered in the recall?

The notice says "... Service Shutdown Information We are shutting down service ... offering refunds for all Peak and B1 devices and accessories. ..."

So sounds like Intel is recalling ALL Basis device, not just Peak. However, B1 is not mentioned anywhere else on the page besides Peak.

evinr• 10 years ago

Yes it is

rasz_pl• 10 years ago

Who could of predicted 1 Watt x86 booting in real segmented mode with 300Hz gpios is not the way to go in wearables?!?!

contras1970• 10 years ago

Who could have! Who could have!

sickbeard• 10 years ago

Ever since the old guard missed the mobile wave, they don't seem to want to take any change on the "next-big-thing". If apple goes into something, they all jump right in, business case or not

Intel is laying off a major portion of its wearables group

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